Check out

Abu Dhabi - Etihad Airways has joined a growing number of airlines to offer United Kingdom passengers an option of making telephone calls using their mobile phones during the flight in the near future.

Travelmole reports that Abu Dhabi-based operator will now allow passengers on flights between New York and its home base to call, text and browse the net and aims to offer the service on all flights by the middle of 2014.

The airline launched in-flight mobile operator facility, the Panasonic Avionics’ eXPhone service and AeroMobile in its Boeing 777-300 ER plane at the beginning of this month leaving the operator with 13 aircrafts to have been equipped with in-flight connectivity and there are plans to cover the entire fleet in a space of a year.

However, the service will only be available to passengers if their mobile phone operator has a roaming agreement with Aeromobile on Etihad flights.

“We have agreements with 220 mobile phone operators, including 02, Three and Vodafone in the UK. Passengers are billed by their mobile phone operator, and prices vary depending on individual contracts. Prices are typically similar to ‘rest of world’ rates, or in some cases, lower,” said the airline in a statement.

The CEO of AeroMobile, Kevin Rogers said they’re delighted to be working with Etihad Airways to roll out in-flight mobile connectivity across their whole fleet.

"AeroMobile equipped aircraft already fly to more than 330 destinations in 90 countries across the world, and we expect the number of aircraft offering our service to double over the next 12 months as more and more airlines are seeing the benefit of offering in-flight mobile connectivity to their passengers," said Rogers.

Emirates was the first airline to allow passengers to use mobile phones during flights from the UK, back in 2008.

24.com publishes all comments posted on articles provided that they adhere to our Comments Policy. Should you wish to report a comment for editorial review, please do so by clicking the 'Report Comment' button to the right of each comment.

Tell us a bit about yourself:

Saving your profile

Settings

News24 allows you to edit the display of certain components based on a location.
If you wish to personalise the page based on your preferences, please select a
location for each component and click "Submit" in order for the changes to
take affect.

Your Location*

Weather*

Always remember my setting

Saving your settings

Facebook Sign-In

Hi News addict,

Join the News24 Community to be involved in breaking the news.

Log in with Facebook to comment and personalise news, weather and listings.